What does the blue line mean in the below picture from FlightAware and how is that different from the green line (I assume green line is the actual path taken by the plane)? #flying #aeroplanes #longflights
Flight path as filed to ATC
Get that second round of whiskey and sleep bruh
Pilots usually divert the plane's path in order to avoid flying through storms, since they tend to be full of turbulent air. This sometimes causes flight delays when the diverted path is significantly longer, but usually there is enough buffer in the ETA that the flight's on time status is unaffected. Note that pilots often don't announce a slight path diversion, especially when the plane will land on time.
Blue path looks like a great circle arc, basically the shortest distance between 2 points on the surface of a sphere. There are flight “highways” that don’t map exactly to GCAs just like how you might take a highway in your city even though it adds a bit of distance to your route. It’s more for traffic scheduling. Like another commenter said, flights can be diverted for things like weather, mechanical problems, etc. but usually at cruising altitude weather and turbulence is less of a problem. There’s a lot of factors that go into it.
If blue line were a geodesic, it would not have a bend.
Also it does not seem like a detour due to weather storm etc also, because it appears like a lot of a detour and the flight says it's on time.
Here is the latest picture of the same flight
Not too surprising if there is severe weather everywhere north of the plane's path and it will still land on time on the diverted path. See my comment above
So appears that the blue line is a geodesic but the flight is not taking the geodesic probably because its designated route is made like that.
The same flight is taking a "very" different path today. That is quite interesting actually. Did not think the variation would be so much.
If the green line is the actual path, then the blue line is the expected path, no? That would be my guess, anyway.